This BoF session introduces the prospective Data Steward Career Tracks WG to the Community.
Current landscape on data steward careers focuses on data steward functions and typologies on the one hand and data steward training, skills, and competences on the other. Much of this current work has been completed at national and continental level in Europe (e.g. in the Netherlands and in Denmark as well as via the EOSC Task Force on Data stewardship, curriculum and career paths) and in funded projects in Europe and beyond (e.g. the FAIRsFAIR and the Skills4EOSC projects in Europe, the ARDC-funded institutional underpinnings work in Australia). The current landscape is yet to explore in a consistent way how professionals with data steward skills and competences fit into (existing) organisational contexts and how data steward roles map onto existing professional positions within institutions. Moreover, data steward career progression and professional advancement from entry level to position(s) of seniority have received minimal attention. Yet, as suggested by the RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship IG survey of data steward career tracks (RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship IG – What does a career track for data stewards look like? [https://zenodo.org/records/10571388]), more clarity around career perspectives of data stewards is essential to achieve a professionalised career profile for data stewards.
The prospective Data Steward Career Tracks WG plans to adopt persona methodology to move the current landscape on data steward career tracks forward. Persona is a well-known segmentation technique (e.g. in IT, marketing, and communications) that represents patterns of representative users’ behaviour, goals, and motives, compiled in a fictional description of a single individual (Cooper, 2004). Personas transform a defined user category into a descriptive sketch that can be accessed and comprehended by both expert and non-expert groups. We believe that data stewardship personas will serve as an effective approach to bring clarity to the currently scattered landscape of data stewardship, in particular as it concerns long-term, sustainable career paths for data stewards.
The Data Steward Career Tracks WG will elaborate a methodology to develop data steward personas and offer an initial set of data steward personas. We believe that this work will support the professionalisation of the role of data steward, facilitate the creation and integration of data steward roles within organisations, and support business cases for data stewardship by providing evidence for the medium to long-term career progression of data steward roles. Moreover, data steward personas will bring clarity to the terminology around data stewardship and will help to map data steward roles from one organisational/national context to another. This opens the door for a more global conversation around data stewardship that has been hampered, among other reasons, also by the difficulty of mapping data steward roles from one regional and organisational context to another (see RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship – Current Models of Data Stewardship: Survey Report [https://zenodo.org/records/7437927] and RDA Professionalising Data Stewardship IG – What does a career track for data stewards look like? [https://zenodo.org/records/10571388]).
The proposed BoF session has three objectives: (1) to introduce the prospective Data Stewards Career Tracks WG to the Community; (2) to discuss with the Community the persona methodology, its fit for purpose and type of information a useful data steward persona would include; (3) to recruit members to the Data Stewards Career Tracks WG. The majority of the BoF session will be dedicated to objective (2). In order to achieve objective (2), the session will include three lightning talks by three data stewards who will present their individual profiles in a standardised way (the three speakers will be provided with templates for their lightning talks in advance), followed by a moderated/guided discussion with the Community to identify information and characteristics that the data steward personas should include. The session will conclude with a presentation of the timeline of the proposed WG.
